World Families Forums - New paper: R1b1b2 (R-M269) spread from Near East in Neolithic

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Rich, I don't know if you have seen the Vizachero's map, where hg. R1b is radiating from Middle East ("Ex Oriente Lux" said the first Christians). Probably the validity of the theories is to hold facts and not prejudices. I remember you the last words of Argiedude on "Dienekes blog": “We thus have 2 lineages of R1b1* floating around in Sardinia. It's looking to me like Sardinia is an island refuge of lineages that have since disappeared in the mainland. And that would point to R1b1* being a long term inhabitant of at least Italy, instead of a recent historic movement, as per the Baralesque study. Gioiello has written to some of these authors pointing out this interesting case, and hopefully perhaps Cruciani will think it's worthwhile to make an addendum to his study and test some of these Contu R1b1 for his newly discovered SNPs”.1) It is now certain, nonetheless the fraudulent behavior of Vizachero, that L150 is a subclade of R-L23 and so far it has been found only in Italy (see the most recent R haplogroup map of Thomas Krahn).2) I am always waiting for the Rozen’s SNPs, that I think will give the final blow to the theories of Vizachero & Co.3) If it will be possible I’ll send to the forum the Vizachero’ map, so you’ll be able to see it.

"And that would point to R1b1* being a longterm inhabitant of at least Italy...

I am more and more inclined to seriously consider that possibility. However it's not totally clear, specially because Italy is better sampled than West Asia and both regions "compete" for this "honor". What I do think is that it's not impossible that R1b1 arrived to Europe with Gravettian maybe (assuming that Gravettian is exogenous to Europe, what I don't think has been proven minimally). This would explain pretty well the current distribution, with Italy keeping an "older type" of diversity, rather not seen in north or west of the Alps. However it would also send to hell the molecular clock in all the variants I have ever read about".

The Vizachero’s map is the light from East, it is rather a picture of the Bible or of the Four Gospels than of a Genetics’ book.It lacks only the three Kings and the star of Bethlehem.

That was really funny. I was struck by the map when I saw it, because the Levant was hugely more diverse than anywhere else. I said it was wrong, because I had already been doing my own variance estimates, and we got into an argument. vineviz later changed the map, and dulled the star of Bethlehem, so that it no longer outshines Anatolia.

Here's the map, by the way. Just right-click to save or expand.It simply shows the variance data from Balresque with a few additional samples (Armenia, southern Balkans, Cyprus, Hungary, Lebanon, and Poland) added but calculated the same way using the same STRs.

Or, for the benefit of those who prefer their science to be portrayed with an anti-Semetic bent, an inverse greyscale version.

If I understand, I'm not seeing a Cardial/Impressed Wares Neolithic pattern. I see possibly a Linear/LBK pattern but I'd expect a little more of a darker band across Poland and Germany to Eastern France.

It looks like Bulgaria and Romania are very important... which is where R1b1b2 would have hit the largest mountain range in Europe, the Carpathians. Some might have found it easier to go straight north into Moldava, Ukraine and Poland. Others might have found it easier to go west into Serbia and Hungary.

I don’t know how Vizachero has calculated the variance of his Lebanese (why only Lebanese? and the other Semite?) data, but, having he access to the samples stored at FTDNA and testing them furtively, perhaps he has many data not known by us ignorant. Anyway he has always supported that R1b1a (M18) was more ancient in Lebanon than in Sardinia, thinking probably that the Sardinian ones were due to a Phoenician colonization, ignoring that Sardinians were dreadful mercenaries all over the Middle East from at least the Ramses II time. But now we have R1b1ba (M18) also in Corsica (see the last paper of Cruciani et alii) and in Sardinia we have probably a second clade of R1b1a (or something similar) as Argiedude has hypothesized.And Italy has R1b1*, R-V8, R-V35 (then probably R-V88), R1b1a (probably very differentiated), R-M269, R-L23+ (the unique in the world: Romitti and his son), R-L150+ (me and many others) etc.Which has Labanon?

. . . It looks like Bulgaria and Romania are very important... which is where R1b1b2 would have hit the largest mountain range in Europe, the Carpathians. Some might have found it easier to go straight north into Moldava, Ukraine and Poland. Others might have found it easier to go west into Serbia and Hungary.

The likeliest route west would be up the Danube Valley and through the Iron Gate.

Rich, let that is Vizachero to say this! I have already answered your question, when I asked you, after the discovery of the 3 R1b1* by Cruciani in Italy (1 in Middle East, but probably Asia Minor, and 1 in Far East), if they were migrants, if they had all come here!And you don’t say that Romans were rulers and who came were slaves and see what happened in South and Central America re. the Y chromosome. In other parts of the ancient world happened the contrary.And we are yet looking for the descendants of Barbarians in Italy: so far only 1 R-L21 and so ancient as haplotype that could not have come from elsewhere.

Anyway he has always supported that R1b1a (M18) was more ancient in Lebanon than in Sardinia, thinking probably that the Sardinian ones were due to a Phoenician colonization

And M18 probably doesn't even exist in Lebanon. The supposed M18+ from Lebanon come from Zalloua's super-bad study from 2008, riddled with errors like no other y-dna study. It lists the haplotypes of 3 very likely R1b1 samples, and claims all 3 are R1b1a1-M18+. It also lists one other haplotype as R1/-b*, but it's almost certainly not R1b1. That means Zalloua's R1b1 samples all belonged to R1b1a1-M18+. But Cruciani's study of neighboring Egypt, despite finding dozens of R1b1 samples, didn't find a single one that was M18+, and Cinnioglu's study of neighboring Turkey, despite finding 4 R1b1 samples, didn't find any M18+. The most likely explanation, and fitting with the overall lousyness of Zalloua's study, is that he mislabeled his R1b1(xM18) samples as R1b1a1-M18+. It shouldn't surprise, as he even devised his own nomenclature "style": for example, instead of writing R1b1c, he writes R1/-b1c. Plus, the haplotypes of his 3 M18 samples seem to belong to the 2 main clusters of R1b1: 2 of them seem of the Eurasian group (438=11), the third seems of the African group (438=12, 389a=14). This mix of both clusters is also found in El-Sibai's study of Syria/Jordan. M18 is derived within the African group (I'm calling it African just because it's very common in the Lake Chad region, not because I think it was born there). Finally, the Sardinian R1b1a1-M18+ has a modal haplotype that is notably divergent from other R1b1 and looks nothing like the fake Lebanese "M18+".

Alan trowel hands writes: “It sort of gives an almost biblical epic feel to things knowing that the ancestral trail links back to an exodus from that area in the Neolithic”.

And this is the problem, that religious prejudices (Christian, Jewish and imagine how much Muslim) lead theories and expectations. The map posted by Vizachero to “Dienekes blog” would be ridiculous if wasn’t tragic. But we have the weapons of irony and grimaces:

The Vizachero’s map is the light from East, it is rather a picture of the Bible or of the Four Gospels than of a Genetics’ book.It lacks only the three Kings and the star of Bethlehem.

I only meant that figuratively in the same way that during an African famine the refugee camps in the parched land were described as a biblical scene. I meant the imagery rather than anything else. Christianity is not usually thought of as a religion based on lineage anyway so that shouldnt be important.

Why does VV's map give a different impression from the one in the new study. The latter really provided a dead ringer for the Neolithic spread of farming but VV's map gives a quite different impression of the detail - less of a smooth wave of advance feel and more the impression of a long period in SE Europe followed by a late move west. That makes a heck of a difference regarding which archaeological model it best matches. The new study looks very like the first farmers but VV's one could be taken to be more in line with the copper age models.

Why does VV's map give a different impression from the one in the new study. The latter really provided a dead ringer for the Neolithic spread of farming but VV's map gives a quite different impression of the detail - less of a smooth wave of advance feel and more the impression of a long period in SE Europe followed by a late move west. That makes a heck of a difference regarding which archaeological model it best matches. The new study looks very like the first farmers but VV's one could be taken to be more in line with the copper age models.

Well, the reason I made my map is that Balaresque didn't really sample nearly as densely in eastern and southeastern Europe as they did in western Europe. The only points they used east of Venice were in Turkey.

On the other hand, I used exactly the same data they did WEST of Venice (just adding some points east of there), so of course any changes are going to be in eastern Europe.

But I'm not sure how much the overall picture changes. Maybe we see signs of ate acceleration of gene flow, manifesting in what appears to be a boundary of some sort in east-central Europe.

Also keep in mind this whole exercise is using just nine Y-STRs. The variance of the variances is not trivial, and the underlying demographic processes were not necessarily producing a linear cline. So some point-to-point differences in variance are just noise. The more densely you sample, the more likely you are to pick that up.

Why does VV's map give a different impression from the one in the new study. The latter really provided a dead ringer for the Neolithic spread of farming but VV's map gives a quite different impression of the detail - less of a smooth wave of advance feel and more the impression of a long period in SE Europe followed by a late move west. That makes a heck of a difference regarding which archaeological model it best matches. The new study looks very like the first farmers but VV's one could be taken to be more in line with the copper age models.

... Well, the reason I made my map is that Balaresque didn't really sample nearly as densely in eastern and southeastern Europe as they did in western Europe. The only points they used east of Venice were in Turkey.....

It's almost hard to believe that Balaresque, et al. would publish their findings with such an incomplete set of data for a critical area. That is a severe weakness in the study. Essentially SE Europe and most the SW Asia were ignored. Ouch!

I would like to see Vince answer on the M18 question, which I suspect is less important than the overall cline in R1b1b2 diversity.

M18 is a challenge, because we don't have really good haplotype data on it. Looking at just the STRs that are in the FTDNA 12-marker set we have:

1 sample from Cruciani, with four STRs;3 samples from Zalloua, with nine STRs;8 samples from Contu, with eight STRs;

But they all used different sets of STRs, so there are only three markers that are common to all three studies.

That said, one of the Contu samples is quite obviously R-M269. The remaining seven are nearly identical to each other (all are 7/8 or 8/8 matches to the others). This tells us that R-M18 is probably not an ancient lineage in Sardegna, since these seven guys have a MRCA of 1500 years or less.

The Zalloua samples are harder, since there are only three and they are diverse. But they are all reasonably close to both Cruciani and Contu samples, so I see no reason to assume they are errors.

“It's almost hard to believe that Balaresque, et al. would publish their findings with such an incomplete set of data for a critical area. That is a severe weakness in the study. Essentially SE Europe and most the SW Asia were ignored. Ouch!”

That’s what these professionals do. Publish! They should just publish the samples and do away with analysis.

All the Vizachero’s theory is based only on his desires again, that a sample of Contu, the most different from the others, is a mistake. But Contu et alii say they tested these samples by SNPs, and this is M18 and not M269. If this sample was really M18 all the presumptions of Vizachero would crash. What a pity that these samples aren’t at his disposal like others, so he would have the possibility either to test them or to make them disappear. But the variance of the three markers comparable among Contu and Cruciani, with mutation around the modal in DYS19=14/15 and DYS391=10/11, make also this sample credible and without another SNPs test I think that Vizachero, after having been punch-drunk many times in these last days, would do better to hold his tongue. Read in the meanwhile Wittgenstein: “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss so schweigen”.

But Contu et alii say they tested these samples by SNPs, and this is M18 and not M269.

I don't doubt they tested them for SNPs.

I only point out that ONE of the samples they report to be M18+ is actually M269+. The other seven could very well be M18+ (they are not dissimilar to the Zalloua or Cruciani haplotypes, for example) but those seven have virtually no haplotype diversity which means they have a recent MRCA.

But on what are you basing your assumption? Have you asked them and they said you are right or are you basing only upon the fact that that haploype is so similar to the R-M269 ones? If so I think it is too early to do it. My theory is that markers mutate above all around the modal and sometime someone goes for the tangent. This haplotype could be one gone for the tangent in some markers. But you could ask: it is difficulty believable that this has happened for so many markers. But the most part are around the modal, as I have said before, and DYS385=11-14 (and we don't know if it is 14-11) has a 12-12 and a 10-12 at Cagliari and two 12-12 and three 11-12 at Sorgono, then it isn't impossible the 11-14 or the 14-11 of Cagliari.

Of course if this was true your theory would be invalidated and my proved. But the answer isn't on the wind, but on the SNPs, like those of Rozen I am waiting for.